Eliminate love sickness with Edgar Allan Poe’s elaborate injection system, which resembles a 19th century box of gadgets and clocks, turns and screws.

Or view Harry Houdini’s 1907 device used in séances by mediums to contact the spirit world. Though in reality these sculptures are created to only look like something out of an H.G. Wells novel, Jacksonville artist Jim Smith’s steampunk collection of over 20 pieces are on view at Butterfield Garage Art Gallery in an exhibit titled “Eureka!” An opening reception will be held from 5 to 9 p.m. April 5 during the First Friday Art Walk, with the show running through April 30.

“My sculptures are the equivalent to historic novels, but done artistically,” Smith said.

Defined as a combination of fantasy with speculative fiction, steampunk was coined in the 1980s and represents the Victorian era paired with retro-futuristic inventions. “Eureka!” represents “found” objects designed to represent scientific prototypes, including beautiful detailed pieces that reanimate a broken heart and reduce gravity.

“For the most part I think people walk by them and don’t realize they are seeing a sculpture,” Smith said.

“They look like mechanical machinery, a possible device, an apparatus, things like prototype machinery. And with that being said they are very steampunk — a lot of leathers, gears and mechanical looking parts to it. However there is always a futuristic possibility aspect to them.”

Smith described steampunk as “a social movement more than just an art movement.”

Re-enactors dress as they are visiting from hot air balloon air ships, donning ray guns and Victorian dresses while Smith tells fictional stories of how inventions came to be.

“I attribute my sculptures to being made by someone other than me,” Smith said. “I don’t try to fool anybody, but it’s in the title in every case that someone else made this thing, and usually what I try to do is make the sculpture the inventor ¬– someone well-known to history, like H.D. Wells or Thomas Edison or Edgar Allan Poe. And usually the piece relates to them. If you see the piece you say, Oh, Edgar Allan Poe wrote The Raven, and I see little black birds all over the sculpture.”

Also associated with Southlight Gallery and Studio 121 in Jacksonville, Smith’s next major exhibit will be in Nantes, France – home of Jules Vern, author of 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea and proclaimed grandfather of steampunk. Smith also works as an art teacher at Bolles School in Jacksonville, and creates installations, photography and assemblages.

“Eureka!” will be on show at Butterfield Garage Art Gallery, located at 137 King St. in downtown St. Augustine. For more information, call visit www.smithjart.com.